Quote:
Originally posted by aquaholic33
hey guys thanks for the input. Kath. didn;t know about the dieoff approach ans salinity thing. As for my water, I did nothing in these past week except the lighting change. ph is 8.3 salinity is .018 amonia is <.05 nitrites are udetectable alk is 13 cal is 480.
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Wait... wait... wait.... hold on sec. Is that the specific gravity (1.018)? You might want to bring that up a bit. It's often been said that the "safe" range for fish is between 1.020 to 1.025 (especially letting the specific gravity sit at 1.025-1.026 for sharks), but, now, many reef keepers are leaning towards 1.025, since this is closer to natural seawater in most areas (but not all - and xenias sometimes don't enjoy being taken up as high as 1.025, depending on the colony). You want both your nitrites and ammonia to be completely undectable, too.
Anywho, getting to the question of this specific xenia colony, it does appear to be something affecting just those two stalks, at least, that what it looks like compared to the other colonies. So this rules out a lot of things. Judging by the color and the structure of the xenia, it all appears to be pom pom xenia (
Xenia umbellata, aka red sea xenia). Pom pom can be a bit more.... easily perturbed than thinbar (after nuclear holocaust, thinbar xenia will survive, along with aiptasia, cockroaches, twinkies, and Kieth Richards).
It's tough to really tell for absolute certain in the second picture, but it has helped to definitely opened up a new possibility.
How long ago did the two "unhappy" colonies split?
New frags and splits sometimes take a little while to settle down, even xenia jumpers. If these are relatively new offshoots, or offshoots that are still climbing towards the light, it might take them a bit to settle down. By switching lights to something with a little extra power to them, you may have stimulated a sudden splitting. In which case, you just need to wait for a little bit. After cutting xenia, they often look like that.